TPK Total Party Kill

[Leitz]

I prefer games like 7th Sea, where the DM and player talk about the PC's death before the game actually begins. Until that event happens, the character is not likely to die at all unless the player does something totally stupid like jump off a mountain. That frees the PC up to a very cinematic game. He or she might not die, but imprisonment for a while, exile, or other drastic life events are possible.

Being free to write a story with the PC is why I game. I'm not looking for a gritty simulation or death funnel, I've seen enough of that in real life. I want to have a PC's arc grow them over time, and to explore the fantastic creation the DM has spent so much time on. When the PC won't likely die because of one or two bad die rolls, it frees the player from trying to min/max or do other meta-game stuff to bolster longevity.

That said, I did run a game once where everyone was intentionally killed very early on. It was a high level cross-planar game, once everyone died the game actually began.

[AsenRG]

As a DM has anyone ever gotten to the point where they are saying to themselves "Hmm maybe killing off the whole party will prevent this from dragging out and the game dying off?"

Luckily not as a GM...but I've been in a game on the player side where we were all thinking about it.
How do I know? Well, at some point the PCs committed suicide one after another, which was a dead giveaway !

[GreyWolfVT]

As a DM has anyone ever gotten to the point where they are saying to themselves "Hmm maybe killing off the whole party will prevent this from dragging out and the game dying off?"

Luckily not as a GM...but I've been in a game on the player side where we were all thinking about it.
How do I know? Well, at some point the PCs committed suicide one after another, which was a dead giveaway !

Yeah I think that is a sign for sure.

[Paladin]

Firstly, love the thread necromancy!
Secondly I’m pretty sure I’ve talks about my 1HP OD&D cleric before, great times!!
Holy Schmidt actually made 2nd level before biting it in a wandering monster encounter- gnoll.

You know... I didn't realize the thread was 5 years old when I replied. Oops.

[AsenRG]

As a DM has anyone ever gotten to the point where they are saying to themselves "Hmm maybe killing off the whole party will prevent this from dragging out and the game dying off?"

Luckily not as a GM...but I've been in a game on the player side where we were all thinking about it.
How do I know? Well, at some point the PCs committed suicide one after another, which was a dead giveaway !

Yeah I think that is a sign for sure.

Indeed, I took it that way as well...

Firstly, love the thread necromancy!
Secondly I’m pretty sure I’ve talks about my 1HP OD&D cleric before, great times!!
Holy Schmidt actually made 2nd level before biting it in a wandering monster encounter- gnoll.

You know... I didn't realize the thread was 5 years old when I replied. Oops.

Not a problem in my book. It's a forum, asynchroneous posting is part of the game here, that's just a bigger interval !